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xiphiasOkay, so, two posts ago I wrote about Robert J. Lurtsema; last post I expressed disappointment that people didn't notice that I did so in the form of a Higgledy Piggledy. And some folks expressed confusion.
A "Higgledy Piggledy" is a poetical form consisting of two stanzas, each of which is three sets of double dactyls, then a dactyl followed by a single stressed syllable. The single stressed syllable at the end of each stanza must rhyme.
A "dactyl" is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
So, the template for a Higgledy Piggledy might be described as follows:
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jadasc pointed out that what I wrote is technically a "McWhirtle", because the strict-form "Higgledy Piggledy" has a number of additional rules besides the form: the first line must be "Higgledy Piggledy", the second line must be a double-dactyl proper name who is the subject of the poem, and at least line in the second stanza must be a single double-dactylic word. Also, in a McWhirtle, you're allowed to stick in the occasional unstressed syllable at the beginning of a line, for the purposes of making things flow better.
As one might expect, this is, quite like the limerick, mainly a humorous poetical form. Because it's impossible, or anyway, virtually, to write accidentally as if it were the norm.
But, had I wanted to make it more obvious, I could have written my post in this way:
Robert J. Lurtsema's
"Morning pro musica",
(With a) radio style no-
body could fake.
He'd intersplice birdsong
and classical music with
stretches of silence to
ease you awake.
The "With a" part is sloppy. In order to make it work, you have to glide over that part fast. But I wanted to make it look like prose, not poetry -- still, I'm not thrilled with that part.
I learned about double dactyls from a program Lurtsema put on. He explained that he LOVED the sound of double dactyls, which is why he called his program "Morning pro Musica", and himself "Robert J." -- "Lurtsema" was already a dactyl, so he had to come up with a form of his name to use that was another one.
So, when you say "Robert J. Lurtsema's Morning pro Musica", you've already got a chunk of the poem written for you. A more formal Higgledy Piggledy might start with something like:
Higgledy Piggledy
Robert J. Lurtsema's
Morning pro Musica
this poem's about
Soon comes a dactylic
Single-word total line
Pro-uni-verbally
Filling it out.
The INTERESTING thing is, of course, that people didn't notice it. And that says something interesting about how my friends read.
At least in English, the pre-twentieth-century poetic forms are almost universally audial, based on how the words sound. In largely pre-literate societies, obviously, you've got no other choice, but even after reading became universal, even after the upper classes decided that, for instance, Shakespeare's plays were supposed to be read instead of performed, poetry was still written based on sound. Oh, you can find an exception here or there -- George Herbert wrote some stuff in 1633 where the typographical arrangement -- but I don't think of visual poetic forms as being a big part of the scene until the 20th century. William Carlos William's poems, for instance, are dependent on how they exist on the page. Their emotional impact depends on how they look, even more than how they sound.
And I think that that change in poetry reflects a change in how people read.
Let me back up to an even more general point.
Things exist in the universe. A concept/idea exists within a mind, and is a proxy for a THING. A language provides a proxy for a CONCEPT.
The vast majority of natural human languages are primarily audial, to the point that, for most of history, I think you could say that a WORD is an audial proxy for a CONCEPT. Writing forms visual proxies for WORDS.
So what you're reading now are VISUAL proxies for AUDIAL proxies for CONCEPTUAL proxies for THINGS that actually exist.
Except that I don't think they actually are -- not any more.
I think that what we've determined here is that for most of us, the "audial" step is completely cut out. Written language is a DIRECT proxy for concepts, rather than being a proxy for spoken language.
See, if you heard me speak my thing about Lurtsema, you'd have immediately heard its poetical form. And if writing was a proxy for speech, you'd unpack the writing and turn it into speech, and you'd hear it then.
But you don't have to do that. You can unpack it directly into concepts, skipping the audial part entirely. Therefore, poetry can now be created in visual forms, focusing less on the audial experience of it.
What I wonder, though, is howkestrell, or anyone else who reads LJ through a screen-reader, experienced this. I don't know if Kes reads my LJ, but I wonder if she would have automatically heard the original post as poetry.
A "Higgledy Piggledy" is a poetical form consisting of two stanzas, each of which is three sets of double dactyls, then a dactyl followed by a single stressed syllable. The single stressed syllable at the end of each stanza must rhyme.
A "dactyl" is a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables.
So, the template for a Higgledy Piggledy might be described as follows:
Doubley-Dactyly
Doubley-Dactyly
Doubley-Dactyly
Dactyly-THUMP
Doubley-Dactyly
Doubley-Dactyly
Doubley-Dactyly
Dactyly-BUMP
jadasc pointed out that what I wrote is technically a "McWhirtle", because the strict-form "Higgledy Piggledy" has a number of additional rules besides the form: the first line must be "Higgledy Piggledy", the second line must be a double-dactyl proper name who is the subject of the poem, and at least line in the second stanza must be a single double-dactylic word. Also, in a McWhirtle, you're allowed to stick in the occasional unstressed syllable at the beginning of a line, for the purposes of making things flow better.As one might expect, this is, quite like the limerick, mainly a humorous poetical form. Because it's impossible, or anyway, virtually, to write accidentally as if it were the norm.
But, had I wanted to make it more obvious, I could have written my post in this way:
Robert J. Lurtsema's
"Morning pro musica",
(With a) radio style no-
body could fake.
He'd intersplice birdsong
and classical music with
stretches of silence to
ease you awake.
The "With a" part is sloppy. In order to make it work, you have to glide over that part fast. But I wanted to make it look like prose, not poetry -- still, I'm not thrilled with that part.
I learned about double dactyls from a program Lurtsema put on. He explained that he LOVED the sound of double dactyls, which is why he called his program "Morning pro Musica", and himself "Robert J." -- "Lurtsema" was already a dactyl, so he had to come up with a form of his name to use that was another one.
So, when you say "Robert J. Lurtsema's Morning pro Musica", you've already got a chunk of the poem written for you. A more formal Higgledy Piggledy might start with something like:
Higgledy Piggledy
Robert J. Lurtsema's
Morning pro Musica
this poem's about
Soon comes a dactylic
Single-word total line
Pro-uni-verbally
Filling it out.
The INTERESTING thing is, of course, that people didn't notice it. And that says something interesting about how my friends read.
At least in English, the pre-twentieth-century poetic forms are almost universally audial, based on how the words sound. In largely pre-literate societies, obviously, you've got no other choice, but even after reading became universal, even after the upper classes decided that, for instance, Shakespeare's plays were supposed to be read instead of performed, poetry was still written based on sound. Oh, you can find an exception here or there -- George Herbert wrote some stuff in 1633 where the typographical arrangement -- but I don't think of visual poetic forms as being a big part of the scene until the 20th century. William Carlos William's poems, for instance, are dependent on how they exist on the page. Their emotional impact depends on how they look, even more than how they sound.
And I think that that change in poetry reflects a change in how people read.
Let me back up to an even more general point.
Things exist in the universe. A concept/idea exists within a mind, and is a proxy for a THING. A language provides a proxy for a CONCEPT.
The vast majority of natural human languages are primarily audial, to the point that, for most of history, I think you could say that a WORD is an audial proxy for a CONCEPT. Writing forms visual proxies for WORDS.
So what you're reading now are VISUAL proxies for AUDIAL proxies for CONCEPTUAL proxies for THINGS that actually exist.
Except that I don't think they actually are -- not any more.
I think that what we've determined here is that for most of us, the "audial" step is completely cut out. Written language is a DIRECT proxy for concepts, rather than being a proxy for spoken language.
See, if you heard me speak my thing about Lurtsema, you'd have immediately heard its poetical form. And if writing was a proxy for speech, you'd unpack the writing and turn it into speech, and you'd hear it then.
But you don't have to do that. You can unpack it directly into concepts, skipping the audial part entirely. Therefore, poetry can now be created in visual forms, focusing less on the audial experience of it.
What I wonder, though, is how
kestrell, or anyone else who reads LJ through a screen-reader, experienced this. I don't know if Kes reads my LJ, but I wonder if she would have automatically heard the original post as poetry.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 06:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 06:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 07:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 08:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 10:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 06:22 pm (UTC)Honestly, your original piece had so many extra syllables in it and met so few of the requirements of a higgledy-piggledy that I don't read it as one even with the line breaks in.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 06:48 pm (UTC)So my sorting method instead becomes 'short post, xiphias, lurtsema, skims & concludes not my type of show, next post'.
I don't think it even gets to a conceptual process. Now, this might partly be me; I read about 200 pages per hour, and I'm not a speed reader. But while I'm faster than most, I'm not particularly out of the norm for our crowd, which takes in so much information that these things, especially when presented in non-standard form (a double dactyl in prose), we simply don't even fully deal with a word, as much as we often process 3-4 sentences in 2 seconds.
I think this post still assumes a step of word for word comprehension, which I personally sort of skip a lot of the time.
(my favourite poet has always been e.e. cummings, whose works are often, from audial form, unreadable, but whose visual poetry works with the words to *make* you feel the cadences)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 07:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 07:39 pm (UTC)TwoThree nitpicks:1. I'm pretty sure the word you want is "auditory", not "audial". I've spent my life in the language sciences and I've never seen the latter, nor has OED (though M-W has).
2. The first line, canonically, can be any double dactyl of nonsense.
3. "Doubley-Dactyly" can be read as five syllables ("doubly dactyly"). Maybe "Doub-l-ey-Dactyly"?... Hmph. Clear but ugly. Oh well.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 08:04 pm (UTC)Xiphias Gladius,
Posting a poem with-
out breaking lines.
Single-lined poems are
Incomprehensible.
Structure gives backbone,
And verses need spines.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 08:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 09:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 09:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-01 09:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-02 02:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-02 11:32 am (UTC)And Patrick Rothfuss, whose name doesn't scan, does it with dialogue all over the place.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-02 12:51 pm (UTC)When you add in the line breaks in poetry, your mental verbalizations automatically pause at the end of each line, emphasizing the rhyme.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-03 07:07 pm (UTC)One of the things I found out from this book is about different parts of the brain; for example the part of the brain that processes hearing spoken language is distinct from the part of the brain that processes speaking. Even more interesting, the parts of the brain that process auditory language (hearing and speaking) are different from the parts of the brain that process written language. As it turns out, the parts that process auditory language are bigger and more developed than the part (or parts) that process written language. As a result much of what people know about how the brain processes language comes from studying the parts of the brain that process auditory language.
So people probably interpret language differently when they read it instead of hearing it. The Phoenician invention of the alphabet was very clever and efficient; but I suspect that humans have always responded to the written and spoken word differently - even when they were the same words.
Perhaps that's why (written) poetry requires the structure of verse to make the auditory components clear, as
... as a side note (just because I think it's interesting) in Elizabethan times theater was considered an auditory rather than visual experience. The best seats were the boxes closest to the stage, even though their construction blocked part of the view of the stage for the patrons inside them... perhaps the closest modern people come to the intended experience of Shakespeare would be books on tape...
Kiralee
(no subject)
Date: 2011-05-04 04:46 pm (UTC)